School Desegregation and the ‘National Community’

Abstract

What can an ethnographer, usually in solo practice, tell us about such an open-ended, volatile, and prolonged process as school desegregation in America? Obviously some have already risen to the occasion, demonstrating the versatility of this approach. In what follows, I hope to build on that accomplishment. The aim, however, is not simply to summarize the findings and methods of these studies or to recommend specific procedures. Because ethnography is almost always a highly localized effort, the pressing need is for a broader macro-sociological framework that does three things for the ethnographer: (a) links findings to those of other studies, only some of which are ethnographic; (b) provides a mapping of relevant variables that places these studies in a comparative and cumulative research tradition; and (c) directs ethnographic studies to those strategic areas that have been neglected and are especially appropriate to its intensive, in situ approach.

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